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Now
that the UK general election is over, it is time to think about the political
future of the left. Whether the current popularity of ‘Corbynism’ endures
remains to be seen, but we should resist surrendering critical awareness to the
idea that the political ground has shifted in a manner likely to automatically
reinvigorate radical thought and practice.

While
few observers would dispute that neo-liberalism’s self-confidence has been
severely undermined since 2008, what remains of our civic culture is uncertain.
Everywhere there is nervous ambiguity and ambivalence, which is all the more
reason to conceptualise a new programme that eschews jargonistic sloganising.
I’d suggest it should focus on three areas: reducing economic precariousness,
resetting the parameters of social life away from the market and
individualization, and initiating an open debate about the cartography of moral
and ethical standards.

Clearly,
electorates are questioning social-liberalism’s amalgam of middle-class
political and cultural interests which have tended to marginalise the majority
of ‘ordinary’ people. Consequently,
liberal elites are in a kind of
psychic turmoil, engaging by turn in denial, sarcasm, sulks, bravado and—until Corbyn’s recent success—dreams of forming a new centrist party. Despite that
success, the left is no less in disarray, and has hardly begun to provide an effective
intellectual analysis of either neo-liberalism’s austerity thesis or the
‘radicalism’ of the ‘soft left.’

If
the left is to become more influential, it needs to expand on its traditional
Marxist-influenced critique of capitalist rationality, coupled with an avowed
commitment to a fashionable politics of recognition. Rather than trying to offer sectional
interests feel-good narratives, we should propound a vision of society marked
by a belief in individual and collective 'mental
progress' of the kind that
exemplifies a clearly articulated ‘moral
politics’ that stresses the
duties and obligations of commonality and universalism.

Vision,
says the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a mental image of what the future will
or could be like; the ability to think about or plan the future with
imagination or wisdom.” We need to appreciate that vision is important in
politics because it provides an emotional prism that allows people to feel the
ideology of a Party. Such a vision should be constructed so as to reflect a
commitment to a particular kind of politics, both reasoned and emotional, not
so much laws and structures, but those inner beliefs and values with which
voters intuitively engage.

In
similar vein, Michael
Young, the Secretary of the
Labour Party’s Research Department who helped to draft the 1950 election
manifesto, claimed
that socialism was about “human dignity” and “communal solidarity,” and
called for “people’s needs to be thought of psychologically as well as
materially.” Unsurprisingly, the manifesto declared that “Socialism is not bread alone ... Economic
security and freedom from the enslaving bonds of capitalism are not the final
goals. They are the means to the greater end—the evolution of a people more
kindly, intelligent, free, co-operative, enterprising and rich in culture.”

This
sentiment echoed that of the influential Labour economist, Evan Durbin, a junior minister in Clement Atlee’s government, who, in collaboration with the child psychoanalyst John Bowlby,
made two critical claims in a study of personal
aggressiveness. First, that the kind
of people “who can support the responsibility, freedom, and toleration required
by democracy are also likely to be peaceful;”and second, that “They are not
peaceful because they are democratic. They are peaceful and democratic because
they are the kind of people they are.”

In
other words, thinking psychoanalytically, our behaviour is all mixed up with
our attitudes and values which are always open to change and development. What
these assertions have in common, however, is a belief that in seeking to
transcend capitalism, Labour’s socialism aspired to promote personal and
collective progress in the human faculties.

It
was, in effect, a commitment to notions of goodness, human rationality, and the
belief that social progress stems from the moral improvement of individuals. This
is not to say that in promoting a vision of making people better than they are,
we should discount economic and political determinants of progress. Rather, in
the frantic and often toxic atmosphere of public discourse, it is to
remind ourselves that individual moral
aspiration is real and that it is critical to the sustenance of all forms of
justice.

But
what, exactly, does it mean to make people ‘better than they are?’ It certainly
should not be taken to imply an authoritarian didacticism. Nor does it urge us
toward impossibly idealistic goals. Instead, it is positive about human endeavour
in emphasising not perfection but the will to do better. It means giving people
the opportunity to see that each possesses what Martha Nussbaum calls a “soul:” “the faculties of
thought and imagination that make us human and make our relations rich human
relationships, rather than relationships of mere use and manipulation.”

These
faculties, of course, are inseparable from morality: deciding between is and ought in a vision that encourages us to subjugate selfishness and
vindictiveness, and to believe in our capability for improving the world for
the public good. In saying that we can usually do better, it is supportive of
our ‘moral needs.’ These needs, says philosopher Susan Neiman, are so strong that “they can override our
instincts for self-preservation” and include the need to “express outrage...reject
euphemism and cant and to call things by their proper names.” Basically, she
says, “we need to see the world in moral terms...grounded in a structure of
reason,” for it is through reason that we are able to ‘conceive the possible’
and not simply accept what is.

If,
however, a vision is to be more than merely a slogan, it needs to promote its
own virtues. Margaret Thatcher had a vision that was in stark contrast to that
of John Donne’s “no man is an Iland, intire of it selfe.” The essence of
Thatcherism was to restore the age of the individual. This lent itself to a
certain kind of moral outlook that espoused, as one
of her admirers expressed it, ‘vigorous virtues’ such as uprightness,
independence, self-sufficiency, energy and loyalty.

While
these are ‘moral’ virtues, socialist morality requires others in addition. The
centre-left political theorist David
Marquand has referred to
the ‘softer’ virtues of kindness, gentleness, humility and sympathy. The
brilliance of Thatcherism, he says, was that it successfully harnessed its
supposedly-classless virtues to its philosophy. These ‘softer’ virtues,
however, also need to be promoted as classless, and the left should harness
both kinds in order to show people that it is, indeed, both socially and
morally worthwhile to be ‘better than they are.’

Working
in a reciprocal manner, these virtues can be the start of a process whereby
they are channeled to make them come alive culturally so that they become part
of the socio-political dialogue, one that leads to a new awareness of the scope
of possibility as a reasonable and manageable course of action. Just as
cultures are not fixed, so a socialist culture can, with the necessary
forethought and planning, be nurtured. Mental progress, then, has to be seen to
be a step on the road towards an ethically sensitive democratic left-socialism,
which can be expressed through ‘moral clarity:’ a public fearlessness, driven
by personal integrity.

Thus,
in deploying a vision of individual moral advance, the left could take a lead
in inspiring the electorate to cast off its unhealthy narcissism in favour of
reason, altruism, fraternity, understanding, tolerance and commonality. If we
ignore or reject these things, we will be writing the tragedy of our times,
namely a willing self-destruction of Enlightenment ‘hope.’ Hope, as courage, is
a necessary virtue because, being predicated on uncertainty, it is rarely
achieved without struggle.

A
socialist vision enables us to reject what often appears as the dour
inevitability of despair. It presents the opportunity, underpinned by
beneficence, to seize the chance to become our better selves. Nothing is
certain, but in so doing, we may begin to make socialism inescapably relevant to
our condition, and therefore, to begin to make a better world.

Of
course, a successful political ideology involves more than a vision; it
requires ideas of the kind that sustain long-term goals and accompanying
strategies. But, as a flag of identification of what the left stands for—an encompassing
moral vision, crisply, succinctly, thoughtfully, and sincerely expressed—it would
be a good place from which to start.